Control Your Blood Pressure

If  you have heart disease, you will have paid attention to your symptoms and you will be in treatment for it. But don’t bet on having those tell tale symptoms until it is too late. Heart failure doesn’t mean your heart is failing. It’s the pumping power that is failing: lacking the power to pump blood at an adequate rate for supply of oxygen and nutrients, your precious juice moves slower through the body on the way to the heart. In response to that slowness pressure builds up in the heart. What other can your heart do in response than stretch like an overblown balloon? Your heart chambers bag out as we can readily imagine, or become stiff and thick. A vicious cycle.

Your hear muscle adapts to cope with the changes, but not for the better. You know what happens at your grandkid’s birthday party: the little terror keeps on blowing and blowing that cool balloon, and eventually pop it goes. Bagged out. Unable to pump nicely, the way we expect, your kidneys try to compensate by storing water in your limbs, lungs and other organs. I mean blood is thicker than water, we say…Eventually you’ll notice this fluid retention in your legs, abdomen and bum, but you might not have caught on yet! You just thought you put on some weight! Naturally, you say, your body is slowing down a bit.

In the meantime, unbeknownst to you, your body is filling up with the fluid, and like the proverbial drop in the bucket, it is just a matter of time before that last drop will come and get you. Your lungs are congested and you’re drowning. You’re wheezing some time

Before that event, and if you’re the type who’d rather not know, let your doctor tell you it’s…bronchitis! After all, you hardly ever go to the doctor, you have no intimate relationship with them, and you’re both wildly guessing at this point. Your half-full glass philosophy will keep you on an even keel, and I am sure although doctors are known for imagining they have all the diseases they encounter while training, it really does helps not to think of the worst first. So it is bronchitis, strange but well, they are the doctors after all.

Before I continue on this road tomorrow, I’ll stress the fact that it IS important to keep fit, to exercise as long as one can – and in addition – it IS important to keep one’s blood pressure as low as possible. To recap, the heart is under greater pressure, therefore the blood can’t deliver what the body needs, your kidneys respond by withholding water that your body stores in extremities, organs, and your lungs. In response to this challenge, try to lower your blood pressure at all cost and lower it naturally. Of course with this disease you’ll be taking many pills to contain the situation for as long as possible, but it never hurts to go just that extra mile.

…to be continued

Yes regardless, naturally! First we need to ask ourselves why we have high blood pressure. Whenever we make that dreaded visit to the doctor’s office, the physician’s

first command is to tell you to ‘relax’ in order to take your blood pressure. You sit there and may well sweat with anxiety, a common affliction for so many people. Your physician looks concerned and may tell you  ‘It’s a bit high today. Let’s wait 10 minutes and take it again.’ (It may well be your anxiety levels that are to blame, but that is another story). Some time later the test is performed again – and probably at other times, too, if you’re lucky -and what you finally hear is s/he tells you that you do have primary or essential hypertension!

What does that mean, you ask yourself? Nothing much except your physician doesn’t quite know the cause of your high blood pressure. Vexed as you are, you’ll not ask for any additional tests (nor will you be offered) to find out what the underlying cause may be: no stress test, no run on the treadmill to discover your fitness level, your body fat is not measured, nor will you have a blood test to ascertain that you’re not missing out on certain vitamins and minerals. Further more, have your levels of protein been checked and last but not least, your homocysteine levels? You’ll find out that an elevated level of this amino acid is a sure indicator of an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

To start with the last question, why are your levels of this amino acid raised? The MAYO Clinic www.mayoclinic.com/health/heart-disease/HB00016 will be happy to inform you that your precious specimen of blood you supplied ‘offers many clues about your heart health.’ To cut it short, one reason amongst many for your raised levels of homocysteine suggests you eat too much red meat or worse yet, processed meats. Another reason could simply be that you’re getting older. One situation you can change, unfortunately the latter you can’t. Now here is one simple solution to your problem: lower high blood pressure naturally by cutting down or out the offending substances: your beloved burger and hot dog! Now tick that off your list of heart healthy things to do for yourself. Easy!

When it comes to diet, most people think of it as deprivation. Diet is restriction, boredom, it is prescribed by some so-called expert (how many books have you bought on the subject and yet got nowhere?). Sadly, most of us have lost our way, we’re unable to trust ourselves what is right and good for us. We’re no longer self-sufficient, foraging Neanderthals, neither are we evolved enough to be linked up to some magic tube that feeds us all the right stuff in the just right amount, with the benefit of no thinking and planning necessary. So this gives some of us considerable anxiety. What is right and how do you do it?

Exercise is diet. No way around it. The easiest diet there is around, I might say. Take it from me. I have ditched my car. Not an easy choice. I am not telling you to do the same. In some places, commuting is the only way out of Sleepyville. So you just get out of the car earlier and walk a bit longer to your destination. The proverbial 20 minutes a day are a joke. But you could go for a sprint a day. A high intensity 3 minute workout is apparently just as good. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251 Imagine the time you have left over to do all the cooking from scratch! I ran this morning. I enjoy it, that’s why I do it. Then, just to get my hair cut, run errands (!) I walked into town, did what I had to do and had a look around. After that the long trek back (10 km, if that helps) Good, that’s done.

The next specifically smart diet is this: avoid having anything in your kitchen cupboards that make you weak in the knees, especially after a hard day, whatever a hard day means to you. Physical exertions has made me weak in the knees, and I have nothing in the cupboards that I can take off the shelf and put in my mouth, pronto. Nothing there that doesn’t need to be prepared and cooked. I am patting my back. Well done, I have painted myself into a very healthy corner. No goodies, no car, and quite a way to walk to the nearest shop. So that diet is done and dusted.

So lets recap: exercise will lower your blood pressure naturally. At the moment I feel like the aforementioned foraging Neanderthal, but you don’t have to go as far! ‘Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health’ says the presenter of Horizon: The Truth about Exercise. The 3 minute sprint will do it for you. Then do diet again: have nothing in your cupboards that seduce you to fudge your healthy living. Treats now and again are allowed and welcome. Even I do it and enjoy it tremendously. But only once in a while. Aerobic fitness brings on the right weight brings on the right lower blood pressure naturally. What more do you want and need to do? Nada!

Is there anybody still out there who during dark winter months remembers coughing, spluttering, sniffing and sneezing, heaving feverishly, unable to get out of bed and there was no relief? No pill to take except chicken soup, Grandma’s old stand by? I do, but then again, I grew up in the old world where medication was not available for your every little ache and pain – your ailments were just that – insignificant, and you got over it in due time. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. And I’m still here.

Those Halcyon days, however, are over by a long shot where you felt victorious for fighting your inner demons without any intervention from Big Pharma. I am not saying I miss all those times, but when it comes to pain relief, the pain is in the taking what you take. Aspirin was all we had, the universal panacea since Hippocratic’ times, and it delivered what it promised. It gave us relief of pain, fever, headaches, etc. and even I can appreciate the slogan Bayer coined for it ‘The wonder drug that does wonders.’ Millions of people now take Aspirin every day to prevent heart attacks and doctor’s order to ‘take 2 Aspirins and call me in the morning’ suggests that you have survived another night and are fit enough to tell your doctor all about it.

But I get carried away with the virtues of this little pill. Because for every virtue, there’s the opposite, and that is vice. An aspirin is an aspirin is an aspirin. In the body of the wrong person, it can wreak havoc as badly as any other pill. Bayer would like you believe that their brand is superior, and they’ll charge you for it royally – or big bucks as they say over the pond. After all, somebody has to pay for all those flashy ads. The rise of choices of pills for every different ache and pain has been phenomenal. There’s big money in them there pills. So we come to one of them, the NSAIDs, anti-inflammatory drugs.

I remember arriving in California in 1980, getting a prescription for ‘xxxxxx,’ a nifty, oval-shaped little capsule that truly took pain away; you know, that inconvenient time of the month when doctors tell you that you could well be temporarily insane. Well, I had been with the pain of it all in the old world at least, and I lurved that drug! And in no time this wonderful drug became available OTC – over the counter. First you had to ask your pharmacist to hand it over to you. Now the shelves of your local drug store are groaning under the weight of that plentiful choice. Have been taking them faithfully over the years, treating myself to pain relief from minor pains to major injuries. Now what do I end up with? High blood pressure! Or drug induced hypertension, as the professionals call it. This ain’t no way to lower your blood pressure naturally!

So let me figure out what it exactly does to my body so I can appreciate the danger of taking these little puppies over a life time. Us women out there hate suffering from (yes!) fluid retention, the water in our bodies or mere certain places of our bodies (we all know where!)where it just sticks and wobbles like Jello or Blancmange for you discerning Brits. I have seen plenty of ‘water relief pills/tablets’ on offer at the local drug store/pharmacy so this is an issue. So here you are: holding a pack of ibuprofen and a pack of water relief pills to take your monthly misery away. ‘You don’t want to do that!’ your friendly check-out person warns you? No! Highly unlikely! Ibuprofen causes fluid retention, decreasing the function of your kidneys, therefore raising your blood pressure which of course puts greater stress on your poor heart and kidneys. This ain’t no way to treat a lady….or high blood pressure naturally!

There have been plenty of studies in women who had no high blood pressure to begin with, but after prolonged use of ibuprofen/NSAIDs ended up with hypertension. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9074128/ns/health-heart_health/t/are-painkillers-risks-worth-benefits/ Of course sometimes the risk doesn’t outweigh the benefit. Think of yourself with such  conditions that are truly painful: arthritis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, gout, or even psioritic arthritis. Pain is the name of the game, and I don’t know if that kind of prolonged, debilitating pain can be borne without accepting the risks of taking pain relief. Of course not, so you accept hypertension as the necessary evil for the benefit of pain relief. And you’ll have to accept taking medication for your drug induced hypertension. Not an easy road to take, but here you’re sitting stranded anyway. The consensus is: if your pain is bearable (and that is certainly pain in the eye of the beholder) hold off on those pain killers. Use them infrequently so you get the best benefit from them. Or better, try to lower high blood pressure naturally. Not just high blood pressure, but other normal, everyday ailments, aches and pains. Chicken soup will do…

You have the silent disease, but you don’t need to suffer in silence, your doctor tells you. Here you are sitting in his, or her office, and you’re told that you have joined the majority of humanity that suffers from hypertension – but relax! There are plenty of drugs on the market that will alleviate that pesky little problem. After all, did you even know you had hypertension? It’s the silent disease, with no symptoms really, until maybe years later when, finally, the damage has been done and you’re beyond hope. Now you just may feel the pressure of stress on you – your poor heart races, you sweat, you may have palpitations, you’re breathless! But you don’t relate that to high blood pressure, no! You’re in the prime of your life!

However, now you’ve been told! It’s official. You’re now the perfect candidate for Big Pharma! Go make ‘em happy and take your pick of a wide choice of drugs. After all, that’s human progress, isn’t it? Your doctor will be more than happy to get you on the right path to health again. So you start out on say diuretics. Take them in the morning your doc tells you or you’ll be up all night going to the bathroom. The accompanying fatigue that your sleeplessness might bring on is simply doubled because fatigue is already a know and common side effect. When driving anywhere, make sure you have  that empty bottle under your seat. Sooner than later you’ll have to make use of it and you’ll be glad I told you. Trust me, David was on diuretics, and the inconvenience of it certainly didn’t have us in stitches. More like in ditches.

So in desperation, you may try beta blockers. Not so bad, I said at the beginning. Being a little hyper, it can calm your heart rate and the loudness of it all; indeed you may feel positively relieved that your heart is not thumping! However, if your doctor tells you that changes in life style also do the trick, then you’ll find out that beta blockers don’t like life style changes. Go for a run, go for a jog or a fast paced walk. You’ll feel like lead. In your legs and in the pit of your stomach. Cold hands and feet? Yes, like prickly ice caps your fingernails will feel, if you feel anything. Oh, and erection problems for you wonderful men out there. But we don’t want to mention that, do we? That’s just a side effect, and who cares when your life and well being  is at stake.

So what more choices do we have out there? ACE inhibitors, yes! Your blood vessels relax because the ACE inhibitor blocks the formation of the hormone that causes them to narrow in the first place. However, you won’t relax for long because you’ll be plagued by a dry hacking cough, and believe me, it had me wretching like when I had the dreaded whooping cough in my Halcyon years. It felt like the coughing canceled out any beneficial effect the drug had on my vessels. I was busting my ears with the pain of that hacking cough. But for your own good, this you won’t really have in large print from your beloved pill provider. Big Pharma only loves your money. And lovingly serenades your doctor. After all he’s the middle man. More dollar for dollar is spent on advertising to get you, dearest (potential) patient, than on research for instance. Yes. Investors have to be fed, clothed and housed in grand style first and foremost. Hospitals and clinics and great health care are incidentals. But I digress. http://www.alternet.org/story/155331/ask_your_doctor_if_this_big_pharma_scam_is_right_for_you:_the_dangers_of_a_drugged_up_america/

So do I want you scared? Yes, scared of easy answers as this pill popping solution suggests. It isn’t. I know, there are plenty of patients who’re sadly well beyond any natural intervention, and I don’t want them getting off the wagon. Life is hard enough, and choices become limited when the going gets tough and your heart and health has already suffered beyond repair. But repair itself your heart can, your precious big, warm and so far beating heart. Life style choices we hear about every day. Nothing new. Diet, tick that off: no fat, low fat; the DASH diet! High in calcium, potassium and magnesium. You can buy that stuff anywhere. Or eat a banana. Don’t smoke, duh. Exercise. I’d go further and do like I do: I ditched the car when David died and started walking for my supper and all other victuals. Has done my blood pressure enormously good. And the inconvenience of it all: imagine, you can’t or won’t want to carry more than you can eat and drink for a couple of days. Not being able to drive for that last bit of treat I might fancy late at night! Not on foot, dear Abby! That’ll lower your blood pressure naturally, I might say!

The last bit of wonderful experience I can pass on, and this is no advice – after all, I’m a long shot away from being a doctor, is this: Music! Listen to music, but not just any old music. Slow breathing with music. It’ll make you breathe in and out, slower and longer, calmer and more relaxed. Slow breathing with music will lower your blood pressure naturally. 15 minutes a day and that is enough it’ll scare the vampires from your door (thank you, Frankie goes to Hollywood, I’ve even tried it with his music) or rather the scary stuff that hardens your arteries, the unknown and known causes of high blood pressure. Get on the ball when you reach that certain age, whenever that’ll be and get your daily dose of je ne sais quoi, whatever that means! Go for it before Big Pharma has you by the proverbial balls. Happy and healthy breathing, I say!

If you belong to those people who believe that the right kind of climate greatly improves your physical health and mental well being, then this is for you: the ‘right climate?’ Lots of predictable sunshine for me! Isn’t there anything more reassuring getting out of bed in the morning and seeing the sun rise over the horizon – slowly, quietly, unencumbered by gray skies and clouds; reflecting back on the water (another must – living by the sea), nothing but blue sky, blue skies from now on… with a nod to Willy Nelson. Waves gently washing against the shore. Breathe in, breathe out, and there you have your natural solution to lowering your blood pressure. First thing in the morning!

I have set the mood. Now imagine yourself in Southern California – LA, if you like, or more likely Venice, by the Beach. The setting or climate is igual, as they say. The conquistadores must have thought they were coming home to roost, so does the environment remind me of Southern Spain. But hike up to Mount Wilson, the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, you’ll start getting a whiff of humanity, or rather it’s  incessant activities. You smell gasoline. It hangs around on some days like a dull blanket suspended over the valley where Los Angeles has sprawled out. Heart healthy living? Go clutch your heart at the thought of it. And it’s not getting any better. The cars are not getting smaller, nor are the people.

Lifestyle, I am afraid, cancels out climate. Not for all, of course – how could I be so presumptuous, but even the ‘healthy’ may show strange preoccupations (size 0 anyone?).The pace for Southern Californians is fast and furious; the diet is fast food and gluttonous. Eat all you can buffets are taken advantage of as if there were no tomorrow. Chinese buffets warn you to eat and get out, not have a marathon session for 4 long and filling hours only to return for more. A culture that can kill you. Not for the faint hearted. Competition is the name of the game. Muscle-bound men, and women, grace the scenery at Venice Beach. Pumping iron in front of gawping tourists may be inspirational, but who’ll be lowering their blood pressure naturally, if not you?

Or me. Sitting sedately here on the Southern coast of Spain, life beats to a different drum. 3 hour siestas are still common. The sun beats down on you. Shops close. From 1:30 until 5:30. 4 hours even! Dentists, doctors, bankers, in short professionals, go to local restaurants and enjoy heart healthy food: Lettuce with slices of onion and pale pink tomatoes. A bit of olive oil and vinegar on it. No more. No artery clogging gunk. Some olives. Gazpacho, fresh cooked fish, small pieces of meat cooked a la plancha. El pan without butter! Builders, plumbers, mechanics get to do the same. At their local poligono. No need to drive. Cheap menus del dia serve what’s fresh, in season and on hand. With a bottle of raunchy red wine to pass around, or in summer, tinto de verano. Red raunchy wine and lemonade. With lots of ice. Yum!

Here on the Mediterranean the animal has a shorter life span. Cordero (lamb) has no juicy green grass to feast on such as British sheep can call their own. When they’re finally on your plate, their chops are as big as your palm. Here on the Med, feeding and growing season is short. The chops are as tiny as fingernails, and you’ll have to eat a dozen or so to make up for the difference. If you’re so inclined. The whole animal is still precious, and all its internal bits are prepared and eaten. Want not waste not. Food waste and gluttony has arrived with the pressures of modern life, but you’ll have to look very carefully, rather than be poked in the eye by it. The Mediterranean diet and life style still comes out on top for lowering your blood pressure naturally. Culture comes out on top. Climate is only a secondary contribution.

When it comes to healthy eating and lowering your blood pressure naturally, the Mediterranean diet offers some of the finest food the world has to offer: abundant  fresh

fish, and shell fish, vegetable that are rich in color and vitamins; pulses and grains that are the finest complex carbohydrates; nuts – that divine pine nut – fruit as basic and simple as mere oranges and lemons (but there’s more!); herbs and spices, and last but not least that, fragrant bronzed and utterly delicious, olive oil – an indispensable ingredient that has so many healthy benefits, you won’t want to use any other product.

Mediterranean people have put olive oil on all their breads – in the early morning, before it gets too hot – for breakfast, or manteca, (lard! my goodness, also flavored with peppers or paprika!) a cheaper and ‘less healthy’ option the Western diet gurus have you believe. Animal fats!  A horror story for your health! Now we know the body needs a small but certain amount of animal fats in order to thrive. A low fat diet was thought to be necessary for heart health, but a study in 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR2006020701681.html dispels that ‘truth.’ How many times have we been told this only to be told that after a few years of study, and simple reflection? Trust the locals to know what they are doing. They have been eating animal fats and plenty of meat including all offal. Waste not want not. There are plenty of cemeteries around to attest to the health benefits of living and eating on the Med. Walk around the walls and you’ll see plenty of octogenarians looking sturdy and strong in pictures displayed by their loving relatives.

Of course, not only food and lifestyle will guarantee a better quality of life, better health and lower blood pressure, but love makes the world go round, and love is what you still

see within the generation. Afraid of your dear old mom ending up in care, you seeing her

once a month or so only to get stressed out that has bed sores, is nutritionally starved because no one cares or has the time to feed her? Intergenerational bonds are loosening too but on the Med there’s still more love to go around. Your mom might be frail, but she’ll be out in the sunshine, walked and held by her daughters and grand daughters. Get some sun in your life, figuratively and literally. Sun is the source of happiness, and that is just good for lowering your blood pressure naturally!

I’ll be back with more stories from the Med. Share my enthusiasm for sun, sea and the healing power of love!